One of the fastest growing areas of technology is the area of message communication. In the information world, rapid access to information and rapid response to messages is often critical to maintain a competitive edge or to be able to take advantage of rapidly changing opportunities. Many message services have been developed and are made available in various ways by service providers, and new such services are regularly under development. Such services include E-mail, facsimile, voice or pager or other wireless devices, and combinations of these and other modes. What is lacking in the prior art is an interface between these messaging systems and the multitude of web pages on the Global Information Network (Worldwide Web) where a user fills in information on a page, submits it to the provider of the web page, who then acts upon the information provided by either asking for further information, or executing the request of the user.
Among the many message services provided, most are essentially one-way in nature. That is, a service can notify you of an event or a trend, but you may not be able to make an immediate response, or the response may require access to a different apparatus than that upon which, or by which, the message was originally delivered.
Paging services have historically fit into the above-described category of no-response systems. Pagers and other 2-way wireless devices have recently been developed, however, that allow responses. These pager devices have buttons, usually two to full keyboard that provide for an incremental signal return. Such pagers also typically have a memory system allowing a number of pager messages to be stored and recalled. The activation of the different buttons and combinations of buttons may be recognized at the sender's facility. Pre-programmed code associated with the button signals may be executed, initiated by the receipt of the button signals.
With available responsive pager systems a single response is typically solicited and acted upon. There are also available interactive systems making use of the two-way pager's abilities wherein ongoing rounds of interactive selections may be made allowing a user to make specific selections out of a variety of options and/or to initiate the execution of specific actions based on certain types of information received. U.S. Pat. No. 5,838,252 issued to Kikinis on Nov. 17, 1998, INTERACTIVE TWO-WAY PAGER SYSTEMS, discloses a two-way pager system which is adapted for interactive process between a pager server and a subscriber carrying the pager. A first message sent by the pager server has labels for return buttons on the pager and in response to the subscriber selecting a return button the pager server sends a new message with new labels for the return buttons whereby the subscriber may further instruct the server. Systems are disclosed for stock transaction alerts wherein a subscriber can reprogram variables at the server, and for E-mail alerts and forwarding, wherein the subscriber can select and alter delivery types, such as voice, fax and so forth, and may also select multiple and alternative destinations for copies of the original message to be forwarded. In some embodiments a subscriber can select and return canned responses to the originator of a message, by pressing appropriate return buttons which the server matches with the canned responses.
The improvement disclosed by this invention takes interactive pager systems, or remote E-mail, one step farther by directly inputting the message sent by the user into a web page by the use of artificial intelligence software in the wireless server which is programmed to interact with the web page then inserts the proper components of the message into the proper locations on the web page.
It is therefore an object of this invention to disclose an interactive, wireless devices to on-line system, where a wireless device user can directly submit input information into a web page. It is a further object of this invention to give the user immediate responses as to the results of his inputs such that the user can execute a series of web pages as if he were sitting at his computer, observing the monitor, and inputting using a keyboard or mouse.